Layout ideas: Heathcote

 I see its ticked over another new year. I would review last year, but personally theres not much to review modeling wise. However I have been doing some thinking over the year on possible projects (mostly around whether it's worth reserecting my Paekakariki layout. Thoughts, Drew?)

During the week I was looking through my picture and file collection on the hard drive and came across a plan for Heathcote at the western end of the Lyttleton tunnel.

From what I can gleen the date is somewhere between 1965 and 1968. The malting buildings closed in the late 1990's and the buildings were demolished after the 2011 earthquake.

So the obvious attraction is that every train to and from Lyttleton passes through the station ( I wonder if there are any timetables avaliable anywhere?). But its not a double track so trains don't just thunder through the scene in both directions. There is also the malt sidings to shunt separate from the mainline. I'm still not quite sure how the shunt would arrive as if it came from the Christchurch end it would have to run wrong line. It could possibly be taken through to Lyttleton and then come back. I'm also wondering what the tonnage through a plant of this size would be a week (in any time period). It would be awfuly tempting to build it during teh electification period...

A bit of googeling turning up a few historic pictures (sorry theres no atributions, I don't tend to write down where I find stuff and so I apologise)

The station building layout was also a bit odd in that the Up and Down platforms were separate (and the down platform was a wooden structure added some time after the first). There was also a standard signal box closer to the tunnel.

After the end of the suburban service in the 1970's the wooden platform was removed leaving a large gap between the up and down lines. this picture also shows the topography around the western portal.

My online searches this week have not turned up any good photos of the grouping of the malting company buildings (theres a stack of the demolition but nothing at all usefull). I've found one picture of the older buildings ( pre 1929) plus a couple of much wider shots which are not overly useful as the resolution is not great. The Wg is on a surburban train.

Finally here is a shot in more modern times (2012?) showing whats left today-ish.

As for building a layout it really would end itself to curved baseboards (why does everyone in this country build layouts on rectangualr boards)